Ember Island (29 page)

“Miss Lejeune? A word?”

Tilly looked around for Sterling, but he had been swept away in the crowd. She allowed herself to be drawn aside, inside the front door of the chapel. It was quiet in the shadows. The voices outside seemed a long way off. Mr. Burton leaned close and said in a harsh voice, “I know why you haven’t been to Sunday service.”

“You do?”

“Everybody is talking about you and the superintendent. You can’t bear to show your face, can you?” His eyes were flinty with anger.

“Me and . . . what have I done to make you so angry with me?”

“I know your type.”

“You know nothing about me.” Tilly tried to soften her tone. She did not want to lose her temper, especially not in front of Mr. Burton, who already judged her so harshly.

“You should remove yourself from this facility, from this island. Before you bring shame on a good man.”

The last person who had aroused such fury in her was Jasper. Fear prickled along her skin. She didn’t know what her anger would do this time; she was afraid of herself. With an enormous effort of will, she stilled her hands and ducked around Mr. Burton and away. He tried to reach for her shoulder to stop her, but she rounded on him and hissed, “Don’t you touch me, you unctuous churl!”

He recoiled, but the alarm on his face was soon replaced by a sneer. “I know what you need. I know what would stop up that mouth of yours.”

Tilly turned and strode away. Nell was waiting for her, Sterling had gone ahead.

“Tilly?” Nell said.

“Not now,” Tilly replied. “I need to go for a walk to cool off.”

She took the back way up to the house, through a horse paddock and then up the escarpment from the steeper side. The exercise helped. She breathed through her anger and managed to unball her fists sufficiently to dislodge her fingernails from her palms. She came around the northern side of the house and walked up the long grassy corridor between flower beds until she arrived at her own plot. It had been cleared and she had planted
a neat border of marigolds. She sat down on the grass, then sank onto her back and looked at the blue sky, breathing.

A shadow fell nearby, and Tilly sat up. Hettie stood there, looking hesitant.

“Hettie? Are you working on Christmas Day?”

“I asked if I could, instead of Christmas dinner. My cellmates are not good company. And I . . . here.” She reached into the inside of her dress and withdrew a slip of paper, handed it to Tilly.

It was a card, made out of an old seed packet. Hettie had slit it neatly and turned it inside out. On it, she had written, “Merry Christmas to Miss Lejeune from Hettie,” in a painfully childish hand.

Tilly found her eyes pricking with tears. “Oh,” she said. “I haven’t anything for you—”

“Of course you don’t. I expect nothing. I . . . I made it for you and I was glad to see you here today.”

On impulse, Tilly reached out and squeezed Hettie’s hand. “Thank you. It means a lot to me.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. It has brightened a day that had become quite . . . dark.”

Hettie offered a small smile and then retreated.

Tilly turned the flimsy Christmas card over in her hands. Today, she had been offered both insult and treasure by a chaplain and a prisoner. It seemed more and more clear to Tilly that it wasn’t always the right person who ended up behind bars.

•

The chaplain’s words preyed on Tilly’s mind: everybody talking about her and Sterling, harming his good reputation. That
evening after dinner, when he asked her to join him in the parlor, she begged off, claiming she was tired. The following night she did the same.

On the fifth night the question was almost a challenge.

“Tilly?” he said. “Sherry?” Weight in the words. Nothing light or casual, despite his forced tone.

“I would rather not.”

He assembled his expression carefully, but in the split second before he did she saw his disappointment. She saw that he felt rejected, bewildered, and it pained her greatly to have been the cause. But she reassured herself it was for the best.

And resigned herself to the miserable relief that he wouldn’t ask her again.

•

The old year swung to make way for the new year. Criminal cases held over for the Christmas period began to be processed and new prisoners arrived more numerously. Sterling was busy; he grew distant from her. She was busy too. She had turned down a summer break on the mainland and, much to Nell’s great delight, devised a medieval-themed project for summer. They learned some Middle English together, wrote poems in the style of Chaucer, carved their own woodcuts for prints, and designed and sewed a medieval gown for Nell. No matter that the gown turned out rather uneven, with a hem that continually fell down. The girl was hardly out of it through most of January, despite the humid heat.

Tilly saw Sterling in the evenings, of course. They conversed over dinner with no trouble, they even shared jokes and laughed together, but Nell was there to prevent any intimacy. She got to know him better, though, and admire him all the more for his
principles, his intelligence, his good heart. She wondered if there were any such things to admire in her own conversation. He never gave any indication either way.

The summer heat made going in the garden impossible until late afternoon, when the sun went over the water and the breeze cleared away the humidity. The balmy early evenings drew her outside, and sometimes she was in the garden until the crickets started to sing and the dew began to fall.

Most afternoons she saw Hettie. They worked around each other, sometimes in close quarters, often in companionable silence. But Tilly didn’t let an afternoon go past without offering Hettie some small kindness. An expression of gratitude for help, a compliment on her work: any small thing to make the corners of her little mouth turn up. Affection grew, almost by accident. A mutual love of being bent over the earth, surrounded by the smell of soil and flowers, bound them to each other more strongly than hours of meaningless chatter might.

She didn’t return to the chapel. She felt closer to God here in the garden anyway.

Life on Ember Island became simply life. Dorset and Guernsey faded from memory and this warm, sea-swollen place became her home.

•

February steamed. Heavy rain all night, ferocious sun the next day. The air was always moist and warm, the garden grew in mad profusion.

She would never like this weather, but Tilly learned how to live with it. The key was not to leave the shade between ten and four. Then, a quick walk down to the beach with Nell to stand
knee-deep in the sea would cool her down sufficiently to start thinking about working in the garden. The mosquito net had to be in perfect repair: not even a tiny tear could be tolerated. And once it was tucked in tightly, her window open to catch the damp breeze and smell of rain, she could sleep on top of her covers almost peacefully.

One afternoon near the end of February, Nell had cried off their walk to the beach because of a stomachache. Tilly wavered between staying to tend to the girl or cool off in the shallow water, but Nell waved her away forcefully.

“I’m just going to lie in my bedroom and moan and groan,” she said. “You hardly need to be here.”

So she walked down to the small strip of sand, peeled off stockings and shoes, and hoisted her skirts up over her knees to wade in.

The sea was cool, not cold. The waves broke around her, sucking at the sand under her feet, calming her. She closed her eyes and took deep breaths of the briny air. Then opened them again. A ship went by in the distance, heading to the mouth of the river over on the mainland. People moving about the world, just as she was learning to stay here very still. She wriggled her toes into the sand.

“Tilly?”

She turned, saw Sterling, realized her legs were on display, and dropped her skirts directly into the water.

“Nell said you’d be here,” he said, advancing as she waded out of the sea, skirts sodden and dragging around her.

“What is it?” she asked, picking up her shoes and stockings. Ordinarily she would sit here on the rock and allow her legs and feet to dry naturally, but she couldn’t do that with Sterling here. Nor could she put stockings on wet, sandy feet. Instead, she held them in front of her awkwardly, as she stood in front of Sterling.

“I need to review with you the order for schoolbooks for the new year. I’m afraid I’ve left it a little late. Nell’s always so far ahead anyway, but I don’t want her education to slow down because I didn’t order her the right resources.”

“Ah, I . . . Can we talk about this tomorrow in your office, perhaps?” She began to walk back up towards the path, and Sterling fell into step behind her.

“I need to send the order across in the morning. After dinner tonight?”

“In your office. If you wish.”

They came up between the graveyards, and Tilly became aware of warders and prisoners moving about. Men looking at her, shoeless, her wet dress outlining the shape of her calves and ankles. This wouldn’t do. Sterling’s reputation was at stake.

“Good day, Sterling,” she said, moving swiftly ahead of him.

“Wait, Tilly,” he said, grasping her arm.

She shook him off. They stood apart a moment. Her heart thudded in her throat.

“I said, good day,” she repeated, and redoubled her speed so she was almost running. She was out of breath before she reached the bottom of the slope, then she checked behind her. Sterling had gone. She trudged up the escarpment, her bare feet bruising themselves on stones.

•

An hour later Tilly was planting begonia cuttings when Sterling’s tall figure emerged from the house and made his way down, directly towards her. He came to stand in front of her and glanced around as if to check if anybody was watching.

“Sterling?” she asked, curious, nervous.

“I wanted to see what you had done with the plot I granted you.”

She climbed to her feet. “I must look a fright,” she said.

“No, you do not.”

They considered each other a moment in the long afternoon shadows.

“As you can see,” she said, waving her hand over the blooming birds of paradise, hibiscus, and daylilies. “It might be another year before I see how it will look when finished, but it is tidy and it is full of potential.”

Sterling glanced only momentarily at the garden, then back to her. The question sprang out of him as though he’d been holding it back a long time. “Why did you stop our evening ritual?”

She blinked, not sure how to proceed.

“Did I say or do something to offend you?”

“No, I . . .”

“Today you wouldn’t even walk next to me. Have I embarrassed you? Please tell me the truth.”

Tilly hesitated. “It may make things . . . awkward.”

“The truth fixes everything,” he said, his conviction clear on his face. It was just such a statement, delivered without a shred of doubt, that made him the best of men.

“Well, then,” Tilly said, not meeting his eye. “It was something Mr. Burton said.”

“I’ve told you my opinion of Mr. Burton.”

“He was quite sure that the whole facility is . . . that there is a rumor we . . .” She trailed off.

“Ah,” he said, and she didn’t know whether he was looking at her, witnessing her burning face.

“He said that the best thing for your reputation would be if I left the island.” She lifted her head. Sterling was staring off into
the distance. “I am hardly going to do that, so I put some distance between us instead.”

“And did he say anything else to you?”

Tilly cringed, thinking of the veiled sexual threat Mr. Burton had made. She wasn’t even sure she understood it, but it had been darkly apparent where his intentions lay. “He said . . . something that no woman should have to repeat. Something that no woman should have to hear, said so violently and with such malignance.”

He nodded, still not looking at her. A little muscle at his jaw worked. Then, without another word, he returned to the house. Tilly closed her eyes, feeling the pull as he left.
“The truth fixes nothing,” she muttered under her breath. “The truth is a great burden.”

•

Sterling avoided her then for a week. He had other business at dinnertime, she didn’t even pass him in the hallway of the house. She wondered if he might be preparing to relieve her of her job. She tried hard to concentrate on lessons with Nell, but one ear was always cocked for the sound of his footsteps.

But then, in the middle of the week, Nell was waiting impatiently in the library when she came from her room, dressed for the day.

“Tilly!” Nell shouted, then remembered herself and dropped her voice. “I have something to tell you.”

Tilly went to the window. It was closed, and the room was stuffy. She released the latch. It grinded in the sill, but she got it open. “Oh yes?”

“Come closer. It is extraordinary news.”

Tilly frowned, anticipating something bad. She came to sit
with Nell. A stack of Greek texts waited between them. Anything but Greek, while she was feeling so distracted. “Go on then.”

“It’s Mr. Burton. He’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“Back to the mainland.” Nell held up four fingers. “Four days ago. Shipped off the island by Papa.”

“How do you . . . how do you know this?”

“I didn’t know it. I only overheard this morning. Papa was talking to the chief warder Mr. Donaghy about it, about how the prisoners will have to do their own Bible studies now. When Mr. Donaghy asked Papa why he’d got rid of Mr. Burton, do you know what Papa said?”

Tilly’s throat was constricted by her own heartbeat. “What?”

“He said, ‘Because he has been unspeakably rude to somebody dear to me.’ I wonder what he meant. Mr. Burton has never been rude to me, though I’ve always thought him a bonehead. Maybe it was that sermon, where he talked about how silly women are. Though that was a long time ago.”

“Maybe you misheard,” Tilly said, hiding her smile. “In any case, you oughtn’t eavesdrop.” She tapped the pile of books. “You need to be getting on with your Greek grammar.”